


One Man's Treasure

by Ilearnedtoreadforthis



Series: STB Bingo [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Angst, Moving In Together, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Gives Him One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28030422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilearnedtoreadforthis/pseuds/Ilearnedtoreadforthis
Summary: "Why am I doing this again, Steve?" Tony complained as he sat on the floor of his massive walk-in closet. "I could pay people to do this."Steve walked over to Tony and set another full box of items that he had found at the back of Tony's closet.  He placed a kiss on his fiancé's head, "You agreed to help me clean this up so I could move the rest of my things in before the wedding. Which, I just remembered, did you go for your final fitting for your tux?"
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: STB Bingo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039661
Comments: 10
Kudos: 91
Collections: STB Bingo: Round One





	One Man's Treasure

**Author's Note:**

> This if for STB Bingo - Square N1 - Domestic Avengers

"Why am I doing this again, Steve?" Tony complained as he sat on the floor of his massive walk-in closet. "I could pay people to do this."

Steve walked over to Tony and set another full box of items that he had found at the back of Tony's closet. He placed a kiss on his fiancé's head, "You agreed to help me clean this up so I could move the rest of my things in before the wedding. Which, I just remembered, did you go for your final fitting for your tux?"

"Pepper took me herself yesterday."

"And did you stop by the cake shop and taste the flavor of cake I picked out?"

"It's vanilla, Steve," Tony dropped his hands to his lap along with the thing he was looking at, "Why would I need to go taste vanilla?"

"Technically it's vanilla bean. It's a bit richer than regular -" Steve stopped talking after looking at the dumbfounded look in Tony's face. "Fine, but if you don't like it, you don't get to complain."

"We've met right?" Tony pointed to himself. "I don't complain, I’m very easy going." Steve raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to comment, but Tony cut him off, "Fine, fine. I won't complain."

Steve started to go back through the box of junk he brought over. "What is this and why do you have it?" Steve held up a ratty old t-shirt that seemed to have more holes than material for Tony to see.

"Oh my God." Tony reached up and took the shirt as if it were made by Gucci and held it up to his chest.

Steve looked incredulously at Tony. "That's a very bold statement you're making."

Tony stood up and rolled his eyes, putting the shirt on. "I'll have you know, Queen is the first band I ever saw at Madison Square Garden."

"Are they the ones that play that song that's like five different songs in one?" Steve questioned, staring at Tony in a black t-shirt at least two sizes too small.

Tony paused for a moment, obviously thinking about what Steve meant as he rubbed his hands down the front of his prized t-shirt, "Oh, yes, Bohemian Rhapsody."

Steve snapped his fingers, "Yeah, that's it. But Tony, sweetheart, don't you think it's just a tad small and a tad ripped to shreds?"

"But the memories are intact, Steven. The memories are intact." Tony carefully removed the shirt and folded it neatly. He looked up at Steve, who was slightly shaking his head. "Don't worry, I'll keep it on my side of the closet."

Steve put his hands up in surrender. "I didn't say a word."

Tony reached up and carefully placed it on an upper shelf and patted it once before he turned back to Steve. "And not many people know that Brian May is an astrophysicist. I actually got to meet him at a conference once. Man's a genius." Tony raved as he knelt down over the box Steve had deposited next to him. "What else do you have in here?"

"It's just the last of the stuff that was in the corner over there." Steve waved it off. "If you want I can dump it in the garbage. It's just a couple broken toys, pieces of metal - junk."

Tony reached in the box looking like a kid on Christmas morning, "Junk? First of all, it is now proper to say vintage, not junk." Tony eyed the mangled and blackened toy doll in his hand.

"Second of all, it's not broken, he was a casualty of the first explosion I ever set off in a lab. I was about four years old when I was supposed to be off in a corner of the lab playing with my toys. But Howard got called out of the room. So I took Joe," Tony held up the doll and wiggled it, "with me to go investigate what Dad was working on.

"Well let's just say that I heard Howard coming back and rushed back to where I was supposed to be and forgot Joe. And unfortunately in my haste, I knocked a few vials over that I shouldn't have and boom." 

Steve pursed his lips. "Don't you think that Joe deserves a proper burial by now?" Steve tapped the box, indicating Tony should put it back.

Tony's jaw almost dropped to the floor, "You can't just throw this away, look at all the memories it just brought back."

"Ah, yes, the memories," Steve raised an eyebrow and shook his head. "Of course," Steve said dryly, watching Tony carefully place the half melted doll on top of the Queen t-shirt He had previously placed in the closet.

Steve then pulled out a partially burned Barbie doll and held it up to Tony.

Tony laughed at seeing it, "That one was just for fun. But Joe and Barbie are kind of a set now and I'd hate to break them up." Tony shrugged and took the second doll and placed it next to the first on the shelf. "What else?"

“Has anyone ever told you that you are a hoarder?” Steve pulled out a few more items, each item finding its place in Tony's closet. Each one eliciting a gasp from Tony and a new memory.

Steve finally pulls out the last item from the box, a 9-volt battery, "And I suppose this is the battery from the first robot that you ever built." Steve's voice started to raise, clearly getting upset.

"No, that's from the smoke detector right there," Tony pointed up. "Remember it was making those insidious beeping noises a couple months ago? I popped the battery out of it and tossed it in the closet."

"Wait," Steve was getting more agitated, "We haven't had an operational smoke detector for 2 months?"

Tony tilted his head, "I told you when you insisted on putting that in here, that we have Jarvis. Jarvis is our smoke detector. Isn't that right, J?"

"Yes sir. I monitor the premises 24 hours a day," Jarvis responded with what Steve thought to be a resentful tone.

"Being just a few floors from your lab, and your history with explosions -." Steve gestures to the burnt dolls, "I didn't think that a little extra protection was a bad idea. You wouldn't want any of your  _ memories  _ to be completely destroyed."

"Wait a minute,” Tony took a step back, “Is that why you're upset? That I'm keeping a few things that are personal to me?"

Steve could see a fragment of hurt in Tony's eyes and took a deep breath, knowing that wasn't the problem at all. "Oh my God. No, Tony," Steve put his fingers through his hair. "Shit. I'm sorry. It was just - you were so excited to see all these things that brought back all these memories and it just reminded me - you know - that I don't have any of that anymore.

"I mean, I have things from the past few years. But nothing- nothing from when I was four," Steve gestured to the closet behind Tony, feeling a lump in his throat. "Not even from when I was twenty four."

Steve looked down at the floor, ashamed for raising his voice to Tony and saddened at the realization of how much he had lost. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gotten upset with you. It had nothing to do with your stuff. Of course you should keep those things. They obviously mean something to you."

Tony stepped up to Steve and took his hands into his own. He glided his thumbs across Steve's knuckles and squeezed gently, "No, I'm sorry. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget everything you lost. It couldn't have been easy to have everything taken from you like that basically in the blink of an eye."

"Most days everything is fine. I have you, a family, a home." Steve looked at Tony. "This is the happiest I've ever been in my life. But once in a while, it still gets me - I see something or hear a song and -" Steve trailed off, shaking his head.

"Babe," Tony paused a moment, "I think I have something that might make you feel a bit better."

Tony left the room, coming back a few minutes later with a brown cardboard box. "Forgive the shoebox, I was going to have a silver one made to give you this on our wedding day, but I think now is a more appropriate time."

Steve gave Tony a questioning look and took the box. "What is this?"

"Just open it," Tony urged.

Steve lifted the lid and slid it underneath the box itself. As he unwrapped the surrounding tissue paper, Steve's heart began to pound when he saw the contents.

"Where did you find this?" Steve pulled an original copy of the Wizard of Oz out of the box, dropping the empty box to the floor and running his hand down the front cover, letting his fingers feel the hardcover.

"The company's been taking inventory of all of our warehouses. They finally got to the one in California and found a bunch of Howard's old stuff from the war. He held on to some of your things, determined to find you one day." Tony nodded to the book, "That was in there."

Steve's heart began to pound even harder and his eyes widened, "You mean - This is mine? Actually mine?"

Tony slyly smiled and nodded his head, "Yeah. On our first date, we were talking about our parents, remember? You told me how your mom used to read you that every night, so I knew it would be special to you."

Steve couldn't hold back the rush if emotion as a tear slid down his cheek, "In the end, it was all she could do." Steve shook his head and spoke slowly, lost in memories of his own, "She must have read this to me a hundred times - had voices for everyone. She would even yip when Toto barked."

A few more tears fell, "I would always beg her to read one more chapter because it was our time - just for us. I loved her so much. After she died, I kept this with me wherever I went just to keep a part of her with me. I used to-"

Steve stopped for a moment as he remembered something and then started flipping pages frantically. "Please be in here," Steve begged to the book."

"What are you looking for?"

Just then Steve pulled out a very worn black and white photo of a young woman, and the tears returned. "This -"

Tony looked at the picture, "Pretty. Who is she?"

Steve picked up the photo to get a closer look, "My mom. I kept her picture in the book so when I read it, she'd still be there with me."

Tony rubbed Steve's arm as Steve tucked the photo back between the pages of the book and closed it. Steve stared at the cover thinking about those nights he spent with his mom reading the story and the nights during the war when the book provided some sense of normalcy. 

"Tony, I can't thank you enough for this - this is perfect," Steve pulled him in for a hug, another wave of nostalgia cursed through him. "Wait, you said that Howard kept  _ some  _ of my stuff." Steve pulled back from their embrace, "Is there more?"

Tony shrugged, "They packed up all of Howard's things and shipped them here for me. So if there was, it would be with that. We can go look if you want."

"Yes please," Steve knew he sounded like a little kid but he didn't care, the excitement was overwhelming.

"Did you want to go now?" Tony prodded.

Steve's face fell, "We should probably finish cleaning out this first or will never get back to it before the wedding."

"Fuck the closet, Steve," Tony said casually. "We'll just break through that wall," Tony randomly gestured towards the other side of the closet, "and make a bigger closet. I have a feeling we're going to need a lot more room for the next hoarder in the family. J?"

"Yes sir," Jarvis responded.

"Can you get somebody on that?" Tony kept his eye on Steve as he talked to Jarvis.

"Right away, sir."

Tony cocked his head at Steve, "Done. Let's go. Let's go find your memories."

"I love you," Steve bent down and gave Tony a kiss and then looked him in the eyes, "But on our way home, we still need to stop and get a new battery for that smoke detector."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments make author very happy!!!!! Thank you!!!!


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